Hi All,

I have been looking for silvelight virtual labs for a while and lo, Microsoft has finally released new set of Virtual Labs for Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 version as below:

MSDN: Silverlight Monster Factory – Using XAML template

MSDN: Rich Internet Applications with Silverlight and Sharepoint

Also, check out other virtual labs on Sharepoint 2007, webparts and more from Paul Andrew’s post.

Often, i have noticed my colleagues ask me information on this.However, Microsoft has come up with a quick answer on this and has provided a new bundle to integrate silverlight applications into Sharepoint/MOSS 2007 portals in Codeplex.

The Silverlight Blueprint for Sharepoint is now in RTM Code for the version which works with Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is also available at http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16420.

The updated release of the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint contains a set of self-contained samples that using the blueprint methodology you can deploy to your SharePoint site to test out the Silverlight applications. The goal of the blueprints is to give you some guidance on how to integrate Silverlight applications with SharePoint. There are many possibilities here, and we’ve put together just a few to get you started.

Note: Make sure you amend the web.config file in the root folder of your SharePoint site to allow for your Silverlight application. We discuss this and provide a link to a sample web.config file, in the FAQ document located on the Beta 2 Releases tab.

I added the last of the RTM files today, the colleague viewer and the custom navigation, along with a Beta 2 to RTM change document. You can also access the Beta 2 samples should you need them from the Releases tab.

For more information about Software-plus-Services Blueprints please visit out main landing page on Channel9:http://channel9.msdn.com/blueprints

The above blueprint is the newer version and an older version of these blueprints are available from here. You can also read more on this from Tim Heuer’s blog post.

Check out another interesting article i found on MSDN: How to create a silverlight webpart in Sharepoint/MOSS 2007.

Keep watching this space for more..

Microsoft has released the next version of Silverlight (Silverlight 3.0). The following are the links from where you can download this version:

• Silverlight 3 download and installation
• Microsoft® Silverlight^TM 3 SDK
• Microsoft® Silverlight^TM 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

The following are the set of new features available in this version:

• Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop. New and enhanced media features in Silverlight 3 include:
  • Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming. IIS Media Services (formerly IIS Media Pack), an integrated HTTP media delivery platform, features Smooth Streaming which dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file delivered to Silverlight based on local bandwidth and CPU conditions.
  • More format choice. In addition to native support for VC-1/WMA, Silverlight 3 now offers users native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio, enabling content distributors to deliver high-quality content to a wide variety of computers and devices.
  • True HD playback in full-screen. Leveraging graphics processor unit (GPU) hardware acceleration, Silverlight experiences can now be delivered in true full-screen HD (720p+).
  • Extensible media format support. With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.
  • Industry leading content protection. Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM.
• Empowering Richer Experiences. Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals. Additional features include:
  • Perspective 3D Graphics. Silverlight 3 allows developers and designers to apply content to a 3D plane. Users can rotate or scale live content in space without writing any additional code. Other effects include creating a queue in 3D and transitions.
  • Pixel Shader effects. These software based effects include blur and drop shadow. In addition, you can also write your own effect. Effects can be applied to any graphical content. An example would be to make a button appear depressed on rollover you could use a drop shadow effect on the pressed visual state.
  • Bitmap Caching. Silverlight 3 dramatically improves the rendering performance of applications by allowing users to cache vector content, text and controls into bitmaps. This feature is useful for background content and for content which needs to scale without making changes to its internal appearance.
  • New Bitmap API. With Silverlight 3, developers can now write pixels to a bitmap. Thus, they can build a photo editor to do red eye correction, perform edits on scanned documents or create specials effects for cached bitmaps from elements on the screen.
  • Themed application support. Developers can now theme applications by applying styles to their Silverlight 3 applications and changing them at runtime. Additionally, developers can cascade styles by basing them on each other.
  • Animation Effects. Silverlight 3 provides new effects such as spring and bounce. These make animation more natural. Developers can also now develop their own mathematical functions to describe an animation.
  • Enhanced control skinning. Silverlight 3 provides easier skinning capabilities by keeping a common set of controls external from an application. This allows the sharing of styles and control skins between different applications.
  • Improved text rendering & font support. Silverlight 3 allows far more efficient rendering and rapid animation of text. Applications also load faster by enabling the use of local fonts.
• Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity. New features include:
  • 60+ controls with source code : Silverlight 3 is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with nine professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. Other additions include multiple selection in listbox controls, file save dialog making it easier to write files, and support for multiple page applications with navigation.
  • Deep Linking. Silverlight 3 includes support for deep linking, which enables bookmarking a page within a RIA.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Silverlight 3 enables users to solve the SEO-related challenges posed by RIAs. By utilizing business objects on the server, together with ASP.NET controls and site maps, users can automatically mirror database-driven RIA content into HTML that is easily indexed by the leading search engines.
  • Enhanced Data Support Silverlight 3 delivers:
    • Element to Element binding : UI designers use binding between two UI properties to create compelling UI experiences. Silverlight now enables property binding to CLR objects and other UI components via XAML, for instance binding a slider value to the volume control of a media player.
    • Data Forms. The Data Form control provides support for layout of fields, validation, updating and paging through data.
    • New features for data validation which automatically catch incorrect input and warn the user with built-in validation controls.
    • Support for business objects on both client and server with n-Tier data support. Easily load, sort, filter and page data with added support for working with data. Includes a new built-in CollectionView to perform a set of complex operations against server side data. A new set of .NET RIA services supports these features on the server.
  • Improved performance, through:
    • Application library caching, which reduces the size of applications by caching framework on the client in order to improve rendering performance.
    • Enhanced Deep Zoom, allows users to fluidly navigate through larger image collections by zooming.
    • Binary XML allows communication with the server to be compressed, greatly increasing the speed at which data can be exchanged.
    • Local Connection This feature allows communication between two Silverlight applications on the client-side without incurring a server roundtrip: for instance a chart in one control can communicate with a datagrid in another.
• Advanced Accessibility Features. Silverlight 3 is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by using familiar operating system controls.
• Out of Browser Capabilities. The new out of browser experience in Silverlight 3 enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto their PC and Mac, with links on the desktop and start menu—all without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Further, the new experience enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not—a radical improvement to the traditional Web experience. Features include:
  • Life outside the browser. Silverlight applications can now be installed to and run from the desktop as lightweight web companions. Thus, users can take their favorite Web applications with them, regardless of whether they are connected to the Internet or not.
  • Desktop shortcuts and start menu support. Silverlight applications can be stored on any PC or Mac computer’s desktop with links in the start menu and applications folder, and so are available with one-click access.
  • Safe and secure. Leveraging the security features of the .NET Framework, Silverlight applications run inside a secure sandbox with persistent isolated storage. These applications have most of the same security restrictions as traditional web apps and so can be trusted without security warnings or prompts, minimizing user interruptions.
  • Smooth installation. Because Silverlight applications are stored in a local cache and do not require extra privileges to run, the installation process is quick and efficient.
  • Auto-update. Upon launch, Silverlight applications can check for new versions on the server, and automatically update if one is found.
  • Internet connectivity detection. Silverlight applications can now detect whether they have Internet connectivity and can react intelligently including caching a users’ data until their connection is restored.

New Features in Expression Blend 3: The designer-developer workflow took another major step forward today with major innovations in Expression Blend 3 including: SketchFlow, a rapid prototyping capability that makes it easy to communicate design intent to stakeholders; design time sample data that enables the design and testing of applications without access to live data; direct import of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files; behaviors, extensible and reusable components that add interactivity to applications without writing code; a full code editor supporting C#, VB and XAML; and many more features that support an improved design and development experience. Features include:

• SketchFlow. SketchFlow introduces a new set of features designed to make it easier for you to experiment with dynamic user experiences and create compelling prototypes. SketchFlow also helps communicate design ideas to other stakeholders, and makes it easier to collect in-context annotated feedback. SketchFlow enables the navigation and composition of an application to be modeled in a very visual manner from a simple prototype that uses a series of sketches, to something much more evolved. A prototype can be made as real and interactive as it needs to be to communicate design intent and SketchFlow can leverage all the existing features of Expression Blend.
• Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import. The powerful importers for both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator enable smooth integration with workflows the designer already has in place. The designer has freedom to view and import Photoshop files layer by layer. Layers can be easily regrouped and elements retain their original formats; layers, layer positions, editable text and vectors remain available for editing within Expression Blend.
• Behaviors. Add interactivity to your application, without having to write code. Behaviors can encapsulate complex design interactions into reusable components which can be directly applied to a user interface element in the application. Developers have access to a rich API that they can use to write their own triggers, actions, and behaviors for use in their Silverlight and WPF projects.
• Sample data. Design time sample data makes it easy to build data-connected applications without access to live data. You can generate sample data or import sample data from an XML file and is available to controls on the artboard at design-time. You can extensively customize your sample data details, and you can easily switch between using sample data and using live data at run-time.
• Improved design and development experience. Expression Blend 3 includes many features that improve the overall design experience including a brand new design surface making Blend more accessible to visual designers. Team Foundation Server support allows easier integration of the Blend user into Team System. Improved animation and easing functions, 3D transforms, visual effects and an improved visual state manager enable a great tooling experience.

Nicholas Allan has posted a nice series of posts on new features of this version of Silverlight, which includes running silverlight application outside browser and more. Check this series of blog posts from here.

Enjoy!

Without a doubt, SharePoint 2007 or MOSS 2007 is the most popular and sought-out skill from Microsoft Gold Partners and Customers across various industry sectors.

Eventhough, Microsoft has been constantly upgrading lot of new features with latest service pack releases, there are still some features & utilities which are desired by sharepoint developers.However, Codeplex contains many tools and utilities which are not only helpful for developers but to all people involved with Sharepoint portal. The following are some tools and utilities which caught my eye:

Community Kit for SharePoint 2007

The Community Kit for SharePoint is a set of best practices, templates, Web Parts, tools, and source code that enables practically anyone to create a community website based on SharePoint technology for practically any group of people with a common interest.

Vision / Scope:
The latest version of the Vision/Scope document, click here!

Import data from Spreadsheet into Sharepoint Lists

Import from Spreadsheet is the missing facet to the SharePoint 2007 List features. SharePoint let’s a user create custom list from a spreadsheet, but lacks the ability to import data to an existing SP list. This feature developed in C# .Net and easy to install will do just that.

Sharepoint Solution Installer

Sharepoint Solution Installer is a Windows application for an eased and more user friendly installation and deployment of SharePoint 2007 solution files to a SharePoint server farm. Distribute your SharePoint solution files with this installation program instead of a raw script using STSADM.EXE to install and deploy the solution.

SharePoint Branding Tool

To have a tool that can help ease up the effort required to manually change branding on multiple sites.

Functionality:
This tool can be used modify the following for multiple sites:
* Themes 
* CustomMasterUrl/MasterUrl (Master Page) 
* CSS and SiteImage Paths
* …and more

SharePoint Cross-Site Configurator

This tool automates the process of deploying the MOSS site settings in all or selected sites in a server farm as shown in the following list:

Note The Tool also enables IT administrators to customize the site settings to be deployed.

• Applying Master Pages across a SharePoint server farm.
• Setting up Web Titles for all or selected site collections across the farm.
• Applying audit control settings to all or selected sites.
• Adding advanced settings such as “Allow content type management” to all types of lists.
• Adding a new Expiration Policy at the site collection level.
• Adding a new Expiration Policy to content types, lists, and documents.

SharePoint 2007 Multiview Webpart

The Multiview webpart allows you to display data dynamically from different views or even different sharepoint lists or libraries based on certain conditions.

Currently, it supports two types of conditions:

1) Group Membership – You can show a particular view based on the Group Membership of the current user.

2) QueryString – You can pass a parameter (say ViewCase) in the Querystring to specify the particular view to show.

You can also opt to use both the above conditions to create another condition.

SharePoint Shared Services Search Provider

This is a neat little command utility that lets you do four things when moving a database from development environment to production environment.

- Accept  relevant inputs from the user

- Export all Managed properties

- Export Crawl properties and relevant categories

- Import Managed properties and map relevant crawl properties.

The above utility is more useful when migrating data from intranet website into extranet website.

Read more on this scenario from Sahil Malik’s blog from here

Keep watching this space for more…

Recently, i heard one of my colleagues enquire about MVVM model. MVVM stands for Model-View-ViewModel in WPF framework (also called as Onyx).

Onyx is a framework that aids in the development of WPF applications that follow the Model-View-ViewModel pattern. The biggest reason for following this pattern is to allow you to unit test as much of your presentation logic as possible, without having to resort to fragile and difficult UI automation. What this generally means is that as much of the code as possible should be moved out of the View and it’s codebehind, and into the ViewModel. Unfortunately, it can often be very difficult to move logic into the ViewModel while not creating a tight coupling to the specific View, or to any UI framework code, which would cause unit testing to become much more difficult. Onyx uses a novel approach based on IServiceProvider which allows the ViewModel to interact with the View in an entirely decoupled and testable manner.

For more information about how to use Onyx, see the Introduction.

To read what others have said, see SeenOnWeb.

Enjoy…

Facebook.NET provides a .net library for use in developing Facebook applications and accessing Facebook APIs. The library primarily geared around and optimized for developing ASP.NET-based Web applications, both FBML and IFrame-based Facebook applications through an intuitive API and small set of server controls. It does support the use of the Facebook API from desktop applications as well, and will eventually enable Silverlight application usage.

The library is built on .NET 2.0, but should run on future versions of the .NET framework as well. Applications using Facebook.NET can be written in either C# or VB.NET.

The library is still in early form (some APIs haven’t been implemented yet, there are only a couple server controls: FacebookApplication, and FqlDataSource at the moment, etc.) but the intent is to grow this over the course of building some Facebook applications, and through community usage/feedback as well. Please help improve this project by submitting bugs and feature suggestions through the issues list, or if you have ideas that need more discussion, please submit them on the discussions forum.

Check out more information on this framework from here!

Steve Trefethen has posted a VS Starter Kit for getting started with Facebook development using Facebook.NET.

May be we can get Twitter.net next…:-)

Hi,

Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office system 2007 and the list of packages available can be found here:

http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/23/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-available-today.aspx 

Enjoy!

Hi All,

Microsoft has recently announced Microsoft Office System Service Pack 2 (includes MOSS 2007 SP2) which is due to be released on 28th April 2009.

You can get more information on the new features and updates available in MOSS 2007 SP2 from here:

http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2008/10/22/announcing-service-pack-2-sp2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system.aspx

and here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/05/21/office-support-for-document-format-standards.aspx

Keep watching this space for more…

MSDN has released a new set of virtual labs for Visual Studio 2008 & .Net framework 3.5 for anyone willing to get their hands dirty with silverlight, wcf, wpf, rest and more. Check them out from below:

• Build Data-driven Web Applications – Fast

             ASP.NET Dynamic Data provides a framework that lets you quickly build a functional data-driven application, based on a LINQ to SQL Server or Entity Framework data model. It also adds great flexibility and functionality to the DetailsView, FormView, GridView and ListView controls with smart validation and the ability to easily change the display of these controls using templates. In this lab you’ll learn how to create a data-driven web application, add validation to the data model and customise ASP.NET Dynamic Data rendering, pages and fields.

• ASP.NET AJAX – Back / Forward Navigation

An inherent problem with AJAX-style applications is browser navigation. If users click the browser’s Back button, the browser doesn’t return to a previous state of the page by default. Instead, it unloads the page entirely and returns to the page that was displayed before your page was started. Usually, that’s not what the user intended. You can manage history (Back and Forward button navigation) to provide a more logical and natural navigation model in your web application. As the page developer, you control the state required to recreate the page, by managing history navigation in both server and client code, just by defining points in your application that act like bookmarks.

• Introduction to the .NET Framework Client Profile

The .NET Framework Client Profile was created in response to feedback from many customers that indicated that a smaller framework was needed specifically for client applications. The Client Profile is a subset of assemblies already contained within .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1). After completing this lab, you’ll be better able to target your client projects to the .NET Framework 3.5 Client Profile and verify which assembly references are not included in the Client Profile.

• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and REST

WCF simplifies development of connected applications through a service-oriented programming model. WCF supports many styles of distributed application development by providing a layered architecture. WCF features support for the RESTful design of web services within the unified WCF programming model. Support for REST and POX style services are now directly supported by the .NET Framework version 3.5.

• Develop an Outlook Add-in

Create applications that are more familiar to end-users with Microsoft Office applications. Add-ins make it a snap to build your own features into Microsoft Office applications. Visual Studio Tools for Office, an integral technology of Visual Studio 2008, includes features that simplify add-in development. Once you’ve completed this lab, you’ll know how to bind Ribbon Events to WCF Service methods, create form regions and host a Windows Presentation Framework Custom Control.

• Build Outstanding End-user Experiences with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

WPF provides a unified framework for building applications and high-fidelity experiences in Windows that blend together application UI, documents and media content, while exploiting the full power of the local computing hardware. WPF was created to allow developers to more easily build the types of rich applications that were difficult to build with Windows Forms, the type that required a range of other technologies that were often hard to integrate.

Work through this lab, and you’ll learn how to use Visual Studio 2008 Designer to build a WPF client application, see how LINQ features can be used against a Microsoft SQL Server database, see how to access a WCF-based service after generating a Service Reference and put some of the new language features of C# to work.

• Using LINQ to SQL Server with the .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008

LINQ is a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompasses language-integrated query, set and transform operations. It extends C# and Visual Basic with native language syntax for queries and provides class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities. LINQ to SQL Server provides a runtime infrastructure for managing relational data as objects without losing the ability to query. Your application is free to manipulate the objects while LINQ to SQL Server stays in the background, tracking your changes automatically. Complete this lab and you’ll be able to:

• Use the LINQ to SQL Server Designer to create LINQ to SQL Server entity classes and associations (relationships) based on tables in a database
• Manage the DataContext and ‘how-to-use where’ clauses, perform joins, order the results and handle conflict detection
• Use LINQ to SQL Server to implement a resource access layer that interacts with an existing Microsoft SQL Server database.

• Build AJAX/JSON Services with WCF

JavaScript Object Notation (or JSON), an open and text-based data exchange format that provides a standardised data exchange format better suited for Ajax-style web applications. This lab will show you how to create and configure a WCF service that uses JSON serialization, in addition to demonstrating how to consume the WCF service from client-side code, including ASP.NET AJAX controls and JavaScript that you write.

• Silverlight Monster Factory – Using a XAML Template

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, Visual Basic, C#, Python and Ruby, and integrates with existing web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

In this lab, you will use Expression Design and Visual Studio 2008 to build a monster factory website, and also learn how to create XAML pictures and consume them using Silverlight and Javascript from a website.

Enjoy!

BizMock is a new framework used for quick testing of BizTalk orchestrations, maps and more.Create unit tests with regular C# MS tests, enhanced with a fluent interface API and a TDD approach. Use its mocking capabilities, to avoid relying on dependent infraestructure like web services or DBs.

The following list shows all the standard artifact types that BizMock offers:

•  
  • One way Receive location
  • One way send port
  • Request Response receive location
  • Solicit Response port
  • Message instance
  • Message verifier
  • Map
  • Database
  • Event log
  • Business rule
  • Pipeline

Main advantages of using Bizmock:

• Rapid testing of Biztalk scenarios ( no more excuses to not test biztalk code)
• No need to leave the Visual Studio IDE
• We use regular Visual Studio C# Unit Tests code ( no puzzling xml) .
• Type Safe API
• Favors agile iterative development cycles with continous Integration.
• No need to rely on real implementations of dependent infraestructure like web services, Databases, etc. ( isolated on the developer machine or build server )
• Increasead level of abstraction thanks to its Domain Driven Design approach and fluent interface.
• Rapid and guided development thanks to intelisense and its fluent interface API.
• Reusability of domain artifacts across tests, like ports, messages, verifiers etc.
• Extensibility model to allow the creation of new artifacts, actions, and expectations types over time and reused across solutions
• Leverages DDT ( Data Driven Test)

Download this TDD framework from here.

Enjoy!